My Little Angel
by Aryelle-chan
Summary: Hikaru and Kaoru never meant to be so bitter. Hikaru didn't mean to be so overprotective and jealous of Haruhi. Kaoru didn't always tag along with everything Hikaru went with. It was all because of one girl who left some scars she never intended to...


Chapter One: An Angel Among Us

~Hikaru POV~

She had violet eyes and white-blond hair. To her, it was a small way of being kind.

To me, she was an angel.

The day we found out Kaoru had cancer was one of the worst days of my life. We were five years old then, and really, the whole thing didn't make much sense. All I really understood was that something was hurting my brother. Something was making him so sick, that even moving was like an all-day effort. That made him too tired to laugh and made his hair fall out.

Nobody had any trouble telling us apart anymore, that was for sure.

The day I met her was scary, too. We had had to come all the way to America that month for special treatment, leaving the comfort zone of somewhere familiar into a hospital where everyone was just as bad off as he was.

"Hikaru, why don't you go look around?" Kaoru asked me.

Why? Because every time I turned around, I saw the way he could end up. Kids who were bone-skinny and just prayed every day that somehow they could wake up and it would all be over.

He smiled and laughed when he saw my expression. "It's not so bad, really," he persisted. "I mean, lots of the others have brothers and sisters that come here this time of the week. You might like some of them." I nodded numbly.

I knew what he was really saying, though. It was time for another spinal tap…again. And I would soon be shooed into the hall. Again.

I covered my ears in the hall so I wouldn't hear him scream. Every time, it was like things only got worse, never better. Always something.

That was about when I met her.

"You're Kaoru's brother, aren't you?"

I opened my eyes to see big purple orbs staring into them. "I can tell; you two look so alike! He talks about you all the time, ya' know?"

She laughed a little when I blushed. "You're Hikaru!" "Y-yeah."

It seemed really awkward. I had only ever really talked to Kaoru, and besides, she was a girl. What did girls even like?

I winced when the screaming started again, and her face fell. "Oh…" she mumbled. "It's _**that**_ time…"

We paused in silence for a moment, and then she added, "Really, it's all done to help, even though it hurts. And just think; when it's all done and over, everything gets to go back to normal!"

I didn't respond. Who was she, anyways, and what did she know? So I said the first thing that came to my mind:

"You're annoying."

Her expression dropped. "Oh… I'm sorry…" She wiped her eyes. Was she… CRYING?

"Oh! Don't cry!" I stumbled. "Don't cry! Please?"

She bit her lip. "I'm sorry. I don't want to bug you; I'm just really-"-she threw her hands down, - "-bored. It's only me and my brother today and there's nothing to do!"

Her brother? Is she one of the ones Kaoru was talking about?

"I'm kind of bored, too," I agreed. There was some kind of feeling of security from knowing there was someone who understood how you felt. It made me trust her in a sense.

She thought about this for a second, then grinned. "Have you ever stair surfed before?"

"Did you really mean it? When you said it all helps?" I asked as she angled the cookie sheet on the stairs.

She thought for a moment, then stood back to observe her masterpiece. "I'd sure think so. Hospitals are supposed to help people, so I'm sure everything they do goes back to helping Kaoru somehow." She gestured to the sheet. "Well, get on!"

"Are you serous?" I asked, staring at her.

"Like a heart attack. Look, it's easy. It's kind of like…well, sledding and surfing, really! If you try it, you'll see what I mean."

The nurses just laughed as we whizzed down the five story flight of stairs; apparently this was something she did often.

"Angel's at it again!" they'd laugh.

"You're name's Angel?" I asked when we reached the bottom.

"Angeline. But everyone calls me Angel."

Suddenly, a boy who looked like her came and picked her up. He was older than us, and he DID look a heck of a lot better than most people around here.

"There you are, Angel! Where've you been?" he asked. "Mom and Dad said you needed to stay with me today."

She pouted. "I got bored. I don't get to do anything when I do…"

"That bad, huh?" he laughed, then turned serious. "How do you feel?"

"Just tired," she answered, resting her chin on his shoulder. "Maybe it is time to go."

Go? "Wait!" I cried. I didn't want anyone to take her away. She was someone who understood. She was mine, not theirs.

She looked at me tiredly and smiled. Tired? Why hadn't I noticed that before?

"You'll… come back tomorrow, right?" I asked, almost begged. She grinned widely.

"Of course!" she laughed. "I'm always here!"

I didn't notice that her brother's face fell a little at that, but he agreed. "Everyday, 24-7."

It was that day that started a pattern. She became my best friend and comfort zone in somewhere different and usually horrible. We spent almost every day together (the days we didn't were usually terrible and slow), and as it turned out, she wasn't that much different from me. She loved pranks, and was always thinking of something new and exciting; but she was also really kind and was the type of person who loved nothing more when she could be the one to get someone to smile.

I started noticing new things, though; she seemed to get worn out quicker than she used to. We couldn't do any stair surfing because when she's fall or hit anything, huge bruises would spot wherever she hit. It all made me nervous, but I didn't ever really suspect anything.

Then the first snow came. It was the middle of November, and the sleepy Massachusetts town was expecting snow, and lots of it.

"Hikaru! Look!" She shook me awake in the chair I'd fallen asleep in in Kaoru's room.

"It's snow! Look at it all!" she squealed, pulling me to the window. Where she was from, they'd never gotten snow once.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" she breathed.

I nodded. Snow as always nice, but the way she felt about it and was grateful for something so small made it even more so.

"How much is there?" Kaoru asked.

"I'm not sure, but it looks like a ton! And it's everywhere!" Angel cried, pulling me out the door. Then she paused for a second and poked her head back into the doorway. "I'll be sure to bring some back for you! I promise!"

He smiled back. "Thanks, Angel."

See, this is what I mean. To anybody else, Angeline bringing a snowball into the hospital would seem stupid, but to the person who got it, it was wonderful. And she never got enough of things like that.

"It's a Snow-Angel," she laughed as she stood up of the snow. I laughed, and then something smacked me in the back of my head.

Her eyes got wide at the sudden hit, and the she laughed. "You've got to throw one back"

"I know," I teased, nailing her in the shoulder, "like that!"

I was shocked that, instead of being something she would normally laugh at, she grimaced and grabbed her shoulder.

I held my hand out. "Are you okay?"

She pulled on a smile. "Yeah, I'm fine. Just a little sore is all."

And so, I dismissed this, and the snow day continued on. But it did become pretty apparent that she was stopping after every time she got hit, and the same look would usually follow. I found out why when we came inside.

She held up her giant snowball (which was at least the size of us) in triumph. "It needs to be big," she had told me, "so that it doesn't melt before we get it to Kaoru."

She smiled, but it quickly vanished when she took her jacket off. "Oh gosh…"

I was horrified to see the huge bruises that lined up and down her arms. So that meant every time she winced, every time that a snowball hit her…

"Please don't tell, Hikaru!" she begged when she saw my face. "If you do, I won't get to go back outside anymore! Please!"

The urgency in her voice was unnerving. Why was she so scared? It wasn't like she had done anything wrong, had she? I promised.

She shook her head. "You have to pinky promise."

This was like, her ultimate promise. If you broke a pinky promise you made to Angel, you'd wish she'd just shoot you. She didn't even really DO anything about it, but it was just a certain way you could tell she felt when you'd break that promise. _**THAT**_ was what would get people.

But I promised.

And sealed part of her fate.

By the time we brought the snowball in, it _was_ at least half its starting size.

Kaoru's face lights up when she places the still huge snowball in front of him. That's about where I dropped off. It was all getting hard to comprehend and a lot of things that where starting to happen made me scared for her.

But whenever I'd say anything, she'd laugh and shrug it off. "You're too paranoid."

About a month after the snowball incident, a miracle happened.

Out of nowhere, Kaoru's treatments started working. He was able to do most of the things he had been able to do before, and was very happy to do so.

But as he got better, she got worse.

"You get to leave tomorrow?" She looked thoughtfully outside, her eyes looked far-off. I'd tend to wonder just what she was thinking about, because she seemed to be going into a silent recluse more and more often

"That's good," she said after a while. "You get to go home, and everything goes back to normal, right?"

I couldn't really answer her on that. This had become my normal; in fact, I was happy when Kaoru got well, because then it would just be the best deal all around. But then it hit me:

Kaoru was better. We were going home. Home. What an odd word. This place had become my home.

"But I'll come back. Kaoru will still have to come in for check ups, and we'll be back in about a month," I said quickly. The silence that came from me telling her the supposed good news was eerie, and I wanted to fill it.

She looked at me in a new way. In a way that was extremely serious, maybe even a little worried. "Pinky promise?"

We returned in two months. The guilt (even though it wasn't really in my control,) was very bothersome, and I was more than happy to return to America. Ironically, to return to the hospital.

It was what happened next that is burned into my mind forever.

"C'mon, Kaoru! We've got to go see Angel!" I was practically pulling him thru the halls before his exam. His hair had actually grown back, and we were once again identical. Part of me hoped and nagged deep down that she'd be able to tell us apart.

"Hikaru, we don't even know what room to go to!"

I groaned, wanting to get there faster. But begrudgingly, I ran back down the hall stood on my tiptoes at the nurse's desk.

"Do you know what room Alex Mason is in?" I asked the woman behind the desk. Alex was her brother's name.

"Mason, huh?" She pulled up the rooming files and frowned. "Alex? We don't have an Alex Mason on file."

My heart stopped. "Did he…?"

She shook her head. "No. We've never had an Alex Mason stay here. Are you maybe looking for his sister?"

My mouth suddenly felt very dry and my eyes stung. I couldn't bring myself to speak as the puzzle of the reality I had thought snapped and started rearranging itself in a whole new way. The reason she was always here, the bruises, how easily she tired out…

I nodded slowly, praying it was somehow a mistake, or a dream, and I'd wake up and it would be the snow day again.

"She's in room 24-B. I think her family's here today, again-"

I didn't get to hear the rest of her sentence because I was running back down the hall at full speed. I grabbed Kaoru and pulled him thru the halls, up the stairs. _24-B. 24-B._ _24-B._

"What is it? What's wrong? What's going on?" Kaoru asked urgently.

I opened my mouth, but the words that came were choked off. "Angel, she's-," I started, but I cut myself off because I was afraid if I kept going, I would cry…

When we came to the room, the door was shut and locked.

"This is Angeline's room," Kaoru noted.

I looked at him in shock. Had she told him and not me?

"She said she was going to be out by the end of this year and her treatment was going well."

His voice was starting to shake because he was starting to understand what I was:

She was far from getting better.

~  
>We knocked frantically on the door. Someone! Anyone! Open the door!<p> 


End file.
